


Expecting Unease

by heiligeharmonie



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Post Final Fantasy VI, Pregnancy, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heiligeharmonie/pseuds/heiligeharmonie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Edgar and Terra find out they are expecting a child together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expecting Unease

Terra, wearing only her nightgown and dressing gown, shuffled through the corridors of Figaro Castle’s private wing, blinking blearily in the sunlight that filtered through the narrow windows. Having woken alone, she’d forgone her usual morning rituals to hunt for her husband. The intensity of the sun and the warm temperature inside the castle only strengthened her confusion; how long had Edgar let her sleep, and why?

She wouldn’t have to wait much longer for her answers. As she rounded the corner to the stairs, she found herself face first in Edgar’s chest. He gripped her by the shoulders before she could rebound and stumble back.

“Ah, you’re up,” he said gently, tilting her chin up and brushing her hair from her face. “Though you don’t appear to be quite awake.”

“If you hadn’t let me sleep so long…” she grumbled, pulling his hands away from her face and tugging them.

“I was just coming to wake you,” he told her, though it offered no defense. With a smooth twist of his wrists, he pulled his hands from her grasp and instead grasped hers. “Lunch will be ready soon—”

“It’s almost lunch time?” Terra blurted out, though with all the force of a gentle breeze. Edgar wondered if it was simply because of over-sleeping grogginess, or if the extra sleep hadn’t effected the exhaustion that had prompted him to allow it in the first place. He could simply ask her, of course, but she’d deny it. Even after becoming Figaro’s queen, she’d never adjusted to having people fuss over her.

“I’ve asked the staff to prepare it a bit earlier, my lady,” he assured her, pulling her closer and guiding her arms around his waist, and as he released her hands, she dutifully clasped them together. “I knew you’d wake before lunch, and I knew that you’d be hungry.”

“I am,” she agreed, laying her head against his chest. “Let me guess: we’re taking it in your study.”

He smiled. “You’d be right.”

And with the most serious of expressions, she asked, “But what if I didn’t want you to finish showing me your new designs?”

His smile faltered and faded, replaced with a look of disappointment befitting a child who’d just been told that his stick-figure drawing was the worst of art. “You—you don’t?”

“I do!” she said quickly, stepping back and looking up. “I was kidding.”

“Oh,” Edgar breathed, taking her hand again and squeezing it. “You know, I should teach you to play poker. With that poker face, you’d wipe the floor with Setzer.”

“I don’t know about that…” she protested as he led her toward the stairs. 

“Non-sense. You’d have him at least on the first hand. He wouldn’t expect you to best him.”

“I wouldn’t eith—er.” Terra stopped halfway to the next level, clutching the handrail and pulling her hand from Edgar’s to touch her brow. It suddenly felt like the stairs were moving under her feet, and if she took another step, she’d stumble and fall down them.

Edgar turned back, one foot above the other, and looked up at her. “Terra?” In the scant minute it had taken from them to move from where they’d met in the hall to this spot, the color had drained from her lips. “Terra, do you feel—”

But before he could finish, she went limp, and her legs buckled. With a shout that echoed up and down the stairs, he pulled her forward by the wrist and cradled her against his chest. 

“Matron!” He knelt on the stairs, taking care to handle Terra gently. He tapped her cheek, to which she responded with a soft moan. “Terra, please—Matron!” 

—

Edgar sat in his study, staring down at a set of unfinished sketches, willing himself to work on them, to distract himself, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t take his mind from Terra. They’d taken Terra back to the bedroom, but the matron had taken the castle physician’s arrival as an excuse to throw Edgar out. He, the king, thrown out of his own bed chambers!

She was probably right, too, though. As much as he wanted to be there for Terra while the physician examined her, something he knew she wouldn’t be entirely comfortable with, his presence would probably just make her feel more crowded. but he couldn’t help it! In the months since she’d come to Figaro, he’d been worried that the extreme temperature changes of the desert wouldn’t agree with her body over the long term. This worry is what had pushed him to leave her to get extra sleep the moment he’d noticed she hadn’t been quite acting herself.

But it hadn’t been enough. He hunched over his desk and rubbed his face. He’d promised himself he’d keep her well, and in hardly a year, he’d failed.

A sharp knock sounded on his door. He knew it was the matron even before she entered without invitation, but it prior knowledge still afforded him only a narrow opportunity to assume a psudo-relaxed posture.

“Your Majesty,” she greeted formally, bobbing the slightest of curtsies. “The queen is alert and fine. She only needed to eat.”

Edgar released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. While it was troubling that Terra’d become so hungry that she’d fainted, it was a temporary and trivial matter in comparison to what he’d been expecting.

“However,” she continued, and Edgar stiffened. A faint smirk graced her lips, to which Edgar responded with a suspicious frown. “Dr. Maella and I did speak with Her Majesty about her other recent ailments.”

Edgar’s frown deepened. What hadn’t he noticed? “And?”

Her smirk turned to a soft smile. “We believe that she may be with child.”

Her smile held. Edgar did not return it. He held her gaze for a moment, then rose suddenly and stalked past her toward the door. 

“Your Majest—” the matron began, only to be cut off by the door opening and snapping shut again.

Edgar barely noticed any of the people he passed as he descended into the depths of the castle, to his workshop near the engine room. He slammed the door behind him and walked straight to the workbench in the center of the room, leaning against it and digging his nails into the wood until his fingers ached.

A strangled sob escaped his throat, and he slumped over to rest his head on the table. How could he have not considered pregnancy? Had he wanted so badly for it to not to be an issue that he’d forgotten about it all together? He’d thought he’d come to terms with this months ago, thought he’d accepted that it was necessary, that everything would be fine if and when it finally happened.

And yet here he was, hiding in his room and crying like a frightened child.

—

After a good meal and a few hours’ rest, Terra was up and about once again, dressed and feeling a fair deal better than she had earlier in the day. She wondered if it had to do with what the matron and the doctor had suggested to her earlier. 

The idea of having a child of her own was still rather new to her. After all, she’d spent so long taking care of so many children, she scarcely had time or reason to consider more. It was only when she’d married Edgar, when she’d realized that at some point or another, tradition would require a child from the two of them, did it really occur to her. But she welcomed it. She so missed her children in Mobliz, but they’d all grown old enough to take care of themselves, or at least old enough to realize when Terra needed to be shooed off to live out the next stage of her life. Having a child of her own would be good for her, she thought.

But where had Edgar gone? Did he know yet? She stopped three guards in the hall before she finally found one who’d seen Edgar within the last few hours. 

She opened the workshop door quietly, without knocking, and peeked inside. Edgar sat with his back to her at the workbench, head in his hands. His coat was spread haphazardly across the table, as if he’d just pulled it off and thrown it down. Curious, Terra slipped into the room and closed the door just as silently as she had opened it. She crept to the center of the room, touching his shoulder and saying softly, “Edgar.”

He twitched at her touch, and lifted his head to look at her without thinking. Terra sucked in a tiny gasp. His eyes were red and swollen, as if…as if he’d been down here crying the whole time. She heard him mutter a swear under his breath as he hurried to hide his face again.

“Edgar,” she pleaded, trying to pry his hands away. “Edgar…what’s wrong?”

“Leave me, Terra,” he croaked. “Please.”

“No,” she argued, resorting to squeezing her fingers beneath his one at a time. “This isn’t like you. Please, just tell me—”

All of a sudden, Edgar spun on the stool and wound his arms around her, pulling her as close as he could and pressing his face into her hair. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered, inhaling her scent deeply. “I can’t.”

Terra wiggled in his hold until he loosened it enough for her to pull back a few inches, trying to look him in the face. “Lose me?” she asked as he relocated his face just inches from hers, forehead to forehead, eyes closed.

For a moment, he was silent, and Terra watched his eyelids twitch. Finally, he managed to say, “My mother…”

Terra understood at once. The matron had told her some time ago, when Terra had asked her about the previous king and queen while standing before a portrait in one of the grand halls. She’d died birthing Edgar and Sabin. But it had never occurred to her that this had haunted Edgar; he’d never given her a reason to assume such a thing.

“I’m not her, Edgar.”

His face contorted, as if he were in pain. “No, you’re not. You’re smaller than she was, you’re—I was selfish to ask you to—”

She unpinned her arms from her sides and cupped Edgar’s face, the sudden contact stopping him short. He have lifted his eyelids, gazing down at her, defeated. 

“Did I ever tell you why I didn’t fade away with the other espers?” she asked, voice low. He shook his head, and she gave him a tiny smile, though he probably couldn’t see anything other than her eyes at this proximity. “I had a reason to live. I lived for the children.” She felt his grip tighten around her waist. “And even though they don’t need me anymore, I will continue to live for them, and for this child, for any that we may have, and I will live for you.”

Edgar broke down again at that, tears dripping from his eyes and onto Terra’s cheeks in the second before he crammed his face into the crook of her neck, sobbing into her hair. She slid her hands around to the back of his neck, gently twirling her fingers in the hair on his nape. 

He’d be fine, in time, she knew, but she until then, she’d have to do all that she could to reassure him. He would be fine, she would be fine, and her family would grow a little bit bigger.


End file.
